Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Bum. A tale of woe and not much else.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine* had a run of bad luck. It was not seriously bad luck like the sort that brings about loss of home, limb and life and is accompanied by a plague of weevil, but very unpleasantly bad luck as you will read.The first inkling that things were going 'pear shaped' was when he got on a bus one day. It was a pleasant day; all sunshine and good company being that of a rather nice young lady he had admired from afar who had agreed to accompany him on a day out. Until he got on the bus, only to sit down heavily on a broken bottle that someone had left on the seat which resulted in his swift transfer to the nearest A&E to have six stitches administered to his posterior to stop the blood escaping.The next 'event' came a week or so later. He was at work and in the middle of a very important business meeting during which he had to talk excitedly and confidently about his company's products while pointing at various things on an overhead projector screen.He was doing very well until he decided to sit back on a nearby desk while taking questions from the audience. As he did so, a rather sharp edge of the desk caught him on the exact spot where his stitches were, and he spent the rest of the very important business meeting losing claret as it seeped down his leg, pooled into his shoes and resulted in yet another trip to the same A&E to have the stitches replaced.Lady Luck decided to bugger off again a couple of months later at the same time as he and some friends were setting off on a Stag Weekend at a chum's rather large and very, very nice estate in the countryside somewhere.During the long weekend, all sorts of activities had been planned such as clay pigeon shooting, swimming in the estate's lake, horse riding, and of course, plenty of good food and drinkies.Did my friend re-open the scar by getting shot in the bum? Or perhaps falling off a horse? Maybe by falling over after copious amounts of alcohol?Nope.He got bitten by the lake's seriously old and cantankerous pike and once again went off to A&E, although this time in a rather nice one in the countryside somewhere.In the space of two months and one week he had had trauma to the same place on his nether regions no less than three times, and thought 'Well, that's okay, trouble comes in threes, so that should be the end of it!'But no, it wasn't.Far from it.Over the course of the next year or so he managed to get shot by a BB Gun at very close range and have the pellet lodge in the scar tissue, bitten by a bitch** that thought he was after her new born pups, slipped on a patch of ice and land on his buttocks and a lid from a tin can, hooked by his own fishing line while angling, fall over in a pub only to land on the only bit of glass on the floor, get pierced by a foil in a muck-a-bout fencing match, got involved in a bizarre accident involving a baby, a baby bouncer, and a Lego castle, rammed by a ram at London zoo's petting area, fall off a log he was trying to cross and get caught on the way to the water by a branch, and stung by a jellyfish while on holiday.Every incident resulted in yet another injury to the same place on his incredibly tender, and very unlucky bum.I bought him an inflatable rubber ring for his Christmas present that year.Touch wood, he's doing alright now having been injury to bum free for the last three years.Woo, and hoo indeed.

*Who shall remain nameless until they pay back the money they owe me.**A Chihuahua.